For thirteen years, Prof. Dr. Peter Schneider has been responsible for the management of the Adaptive Systems Engineering branch EAS, which is part of the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS. Since January 1, 2024, the management of the institute has been strengthened by electrical engineer Dr. Wolfgang Felber.

Dr.-Ing. Kurt D. Bettenhausen, Chief Technology and Development Officer, is leaving the Harting Technology Group by mutual agreement. He will relinquish his office on March 01, 2024.

Establishing Central Germany as a "3D printing region", opening up new fields of application and making additive manufacturing with thermoplastics economically viable for small and medium-sized enterprises: With this goal in mind, 15 partners have joined forces in the "AddiQ" project. The Fraunhofer Institute for Microstructure of Materials and Systems IMWS in Halle (Saale) is involved in projects on heavy-duty components for transportation and lightweight, comfortable orthoses.

EnerSys has introduced the NexSys Air wireless charger. Designed for a wide range of automated guided vehicles (AGVs), the wireless charger offers an advanced, space-saving design to automate the charging process and eliminate maintenance tasks. This is a safe and convenient solution for operating equipment and AGV manufacturers (OEMs) that eliminates the need for physical connections.

With the merger of the companies UFT, TKW and VMR to form "Henngineered" in July 2023, the parent company, the Austrian Henn Connector Group, combines valuable expertise and services under one roof.

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No sooner had LED2WORK announced the founding of LED2WORK Inc. and its development strategy in the USA than Holger Ritter was introduced as Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at the luminaire manufacturer's headquarters in Pforzheim.

Innovace 2024, ACE Shock Absorber's competition for aspiring engineers, sets participants the task of developing a device for the improved diagnosis of climbing injuries by September 30, 2024.

MV-Tec Software, international software manufacturer for industrial image processing, announces an important change in the Merlic team: Ulf Schulmeyer has taken over product management for the easy-to-use Merlic software.

Embedded AI has the potential to transform industry in many ways. From increasing efficiency and quality assurance to energy efficiency and innovation, this technology offers numerous benefits. Artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to monitor almost all potential weak points of the heat pump.

As part of a project funded by the EU and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection, Secunet, a cybersecurity company in Germany, is working with partners to develop highly secure and automatically networked edge cloud infrastructure modules.

Following its strong trade fair results in 2023, parts2clean will continue to develop its consistently market-oriented strategy and switch to a two-year event cycle in the odd-numbered calendar years. This was decided by the organizers, Deutsche Messe in Hanover, together with the German Industrial Parts Cleaning Association (FiT), the trade fair advisory board and the exhibiting companies.

The German technology company Continental, together with the governor of Aguascalientes, has announced the construction of a new hydraulic hose plant for industrial purposes. The planned investment amounts to around 90 million dollars and is one of the largest investments for Continental's Contitech division in 2024.

Dassault Systèmes has announced its unaudited IFRS financial results for the fourth quarter and the year ending December 31, 2023.

Tool clamping systems have a considerable influence on the precision and efficiency of machining processes. In conventional clamping systems, the clamping force required to fix the tool holder is applied using spring assemblies. The force required to release the holder is realized with high energy consumption by a hydraulic release unit. Ott-Jakob Spanntechnik and the Institute of Production Engineering and Machine Tools (IFW) at Leibniz Universität Hannover are therefore researching a new type of clamping concept based on bidirectional actuators made from shape memory alloys.

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Although augmented reality (AR) is not yet established across the board in industry, it is becoming increasingly important. Almer Technologies wants to help this future technology achieve a breakthrough and will be cooperating with the global technology company TeamViewer in the future.

Last week, we asked the readers of INDUSTRIAL Production how they would assess economic development in 2024 in light of the difficult political, social and economic circumstances for their company and their industry. The result is mixed, but with a clear trend.

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Michael Larsson took over the position of President at Dematic on January 1 and was simultaneously appointed as a member of the Kion Group Executive Board. He succeeds Hasan Dandashly, who has retired.

In its trend research published in autumn 2023, BASF showed that the traditional color palette in the automotive sector has undergone a change. The recently published BASF Color Report 2023 for Automotive OEM Coatings underpins this trend with figures. According to the report, the colors white, black, grey and silver continue to dominate in private cars. In Germany, blue is one of the favorites.

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The demands on handling performance in the logistics sector are constantly increasing. In order to meet these challenges, modular storage and retrieval machines in a modular system for pallets, containers or small parts are a decisive success factor.

On January 26, 2024, the Plagiarius campaign awarded its dreaded "Plagiarius" negative prize for the 48th time to manufacturers and retailers of particularly brazen counterfeits and fakes.